Trump and Epstein: The US President's "obscene" letter on the birthday of the financier who committed suicide in prison.

It's a war between the two main protagonists of the American conservative universe of the last 10 years. In the ring are Donald Trump , who returned to the White House last January, and Rupert Murdoch , the Australian media magnate who owns, among other things, Fox News, a TV channel very close to the US president, and the Wall Street Journal , the most authoritative US business newspaper and beyond.

The subject of the dispute is the publication by the WSJ of an article revealing the existence of a birthday card that Trump wrote to financier Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. Epstein was arrested in 2019 and committed suicide in a New York prison in August of that year, just a month after being arrested for child sex trafficking.

The note cited by the Wall Street Journal confirms what was already known: the closeness and friendship between Trump and Epstein, a close relationship already evidenced over the years by photos, videos, and statements. Particularly after the financier's arrest and death in 2019, Trump had attempted to downplay or deny his close ties to Epstein.

The greeting card would prove otherwise. The text contains a hand-drawn sketch of a naked woman , in which Trump's signature forms the woman's pubic hair. The current US president addresses Epstein as "friend" and alludes in the typewritten text , which contains a sort of third-person dialogue between the tycoon and the financier, to a common secret they supposedly share .

The publication of the article and the note provoked a furious reaction from the White House occupant. Trump, contacted by the Wall Street Journal for comment, said the note was not written by him: "It's not me, it's fake, it's a fake story from the Wall Street Journal . I've never drawn a picture in my life. I don't draw women. That's not my language, that's not my words," he later threatened to sue Murdoch's newspaper.

The other reaction was to announce that they had authorized the release of some legal documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case . The financier's case has been causing enormous problems for weeks between Trump and his own electoral base, the MAGA movement (from Make America Great Again, Trump's well-known slogan).

For years, conspiracy theories have circulated within the American far right, especially among Trump supporters, alleging that Epstein, along with his partner Ghislaine Maxwell , organized a pedophile ring composed of actors, businessmen, and politicians, all strictly Democratic. After his arrest in July 2019, Epstein did not commit suicide in prison but was killed or forced to commit suicide by his "clients," a list of whom is said to exist, which, along with other documents on the financier, constitutes the so-called "Epstein files."

Yet after arriving at the White House, Trump supporters announced in recent weeks, after a review of the documents, that there were no revelations to make in the Epstein case: the financier committed suicide and there is no list of "VIP clients." The MAGA community obviously refused to accept the closure of the case, putting particular pressure on Attorney General Pam Bondi and the current Director and Deputy Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino, all staunch supporters of the conspiracy theory.

Trump didn't appreciate the reaction from his own MAGA supporters, turning the tables: he called the theories he'd long championed "Democratic fake news" and called the right-wing activists who continue to support them "spineless." Only after the Wall Street Journal article did Trump partially reverse his stance, deciding to release some documents on the Epstein case, though it's currently unclear which ones.